Upmarket French cosmetics retailer L'Occitane has decided to hold an initial public offering in Hong Kong in April. It is extremely unusual for a French company with no overseas production plants to list its shares on the Hong Kong bourse rather than the Euronext stock exchange in Paris. The move is said to be based on L'Occitane's plans to boost its brand awareness in Asia, which has seen explosive growth in demand for foreign cosmetics, and to enter the vast Chinese market.

U.K. insurer Prudential, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, also plans to list its shares in Hong Kong soon in order to lure Asian investors. In January, the world's largest aluminum maker RusAl became the first Russian company to list its shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Last year, the HKSE was home to US$30.8 billion worth of IPOs, beating the New York Stock Exchange to rank first in the world. "It seems all roads lead to [Hong Kong's] bourse," the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Hong Kong is attracting more than just company shares. Global financial information service provider Thomson Reuters' head of investment and advisory services has moved from New York to Hong Kong, while the CEO of the world's largest bank HSBC also transferred there from London. After the global financial crisis in 2008, large numbers of Wall Street financial workers moved to Hong Kong too. As Asia emerges as the new center of global finance and economy, the island city is attracting talent and money from around the world.

Hong Kong has a wide variety of attributes befitting an international financial hub. Around 200 banks and 1,500 brokerages operate in an area smaller than the size of Yeouido in Seoul, creating an environment rich in information and highly attuned to shifts in market trends. It offers open foreign exchange markets, low tax rates on corporate income, and a flexible labor market. These factors have enabled Hong Kong to maintain its place at the top of the global economic freedom index since 1994. Other strengths include the high level of English fluency among residents, and amenities catering to foreigners. The city’s population is just seven million, but it has around 140 foreign elementary, middle and high schools.

Korea has been striving to become a financial hub since 1999, but has made little progress. The nation's competitiveness as a global financial center ranks 35th in the worldwide standings announced every six months by a U.K. consulting firm. That compares to Hong Kong (third place), Singapore (fourth), Shenzhen (fifth) and Tokyo (seventh) and is even lower than Shanghai (10th), Dubai (21st), Beijing (22nd) and Taipei (24th). Considering the country's poor track record in the labor market, taxation, English-fluency and living conditions for foreigners, Korea still has a long way to go.

By Chosun Ilbo columnist Kim Ki-cheon